Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Let contentment be your earrings. Let humility and effort be your begging bowl. Let meditation be the ash on your body.
Let the awareness of death be the cloak you wear — not as something dark, but as something that keeps you honest and present. Let your body be held with care. Let trust in the oneness be your walking staff.
See all spiritual paths as your community — all of them, not just one. Conquer the mind — and you conquer the world.
I bow to the oneness, I bow. Primal. Pure light. Without beginning, without end. Through all the ages — ever the same.
Guru Nanak takes the yogi's outfit and turns every piece of it into something you carry inside.
In his time, the Nath yogis — wandering holy men who gave up home and family — were a familiar sight in Punjab. You knew them by what they wore and carried: big earrings, a begging bowl, ash rubbed on the body, a patched coat, a walking staff. Every one of these appears here.
Guru Nanak does not make fun of them. He gives each object an inner meaning. The earrings become contentment. The begging bowl becomes humility and honest effort. The ash becomes meditation. The patched coat becomes remembering that life is short. The staff becomes trust in the One. He is saying: what you are trying to show with these things — letting go of ego, discipline, knowing that life does not last, turning toward the One — is real and good. But you can wear the outfit without the inside. And you can have the inside without the outfit.
The teaching tradition looks closely at the begging bowl. The bowl is saram, effort. And a bowl is not food. It is the empty thing you hold out. So your effort is not what feeds you; it is only the asking. You bring your discipline and sincerity like an outstretched bowl, and what fills it — the Name, the real food — is given, not earned. This guards against a common trap: mistaking your own hard work for the prize, when the work is only what lets you ask.
Man jeetai jag jeet — win over your own mind, and you win the world. This one line sums up the inner teaching of all of Japji. The world does not really change through force or wealth. It changes when the people in it change — when each heart comes into line with the One. The change that matters starts inside.
The ending is aad aneel anaad anaahat jug jug ayko vays, and it echoes the Mool Mantar, the opening lines of Japji. The tradition unfolds its words. Aad — the source, where everything begins; and yet anaad — itself without any beginning. It starts everything, and nothing started it. Aneel — spotless, untouched by the colours of maya, the passing show of the world. Anaahat — unstruck and unending, a sound no one had to make. It is the beginning that had no beginning, the note no one played. Jug jug ayko vays — the same through all the ages. These words close four pauris in a row, 28 through 31. Each time, they remind us: under all the talk of outer and inner practice, all the lists and pictures, the One itself does not change.
What does your mind spend most of its time on — worrying, comparing, planning, replaying conversations? If you could redirect that energy toward what truly matters, where would you point it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI